typical weekly menus in 1960

bonnie_2

Nanna says that in the 1960's, you could tell what day of the week it was by what you ate. does anybody know. Am trying to only eat british and lose weight, so it might be interesting.

culpepper

Lots of people had roast beef on sunday,fish on friday. My friend always had chicken hotpot on tuesdays. I think it was different per family .
We never had pop unless it was a special occassion and biscuits and cakes only on sunday tea.

Pink.

Hi bonnie,

It's not 1960's but this thread makes fascinating reading:

Thriftlady's wartime experiment -days 1 +2

Pink

thriftlady_2

I was very small in the 60s but my mum made a definite decision not to cook the same meals each day of the week because that was what her mum did (40s and 50s), and mum loathed it

I think there's a lot to be said for a repetitive menu plan though, as long as you're getting a variety of nutrients -carbs, protein, healthy fats, fibre vitamins and minerals you don't need a different meal every day. My gran, bless her wasn't the best cook in the world so I can sympathise with my mum. We did however have a fairly small repertoire of meals so we ended up with a lot of repeats anyway.

How about this as a framework ?

Monday -leftover day- chop leftover roast and braise with onion, carrots and other veg and stock. Serve over Yorkshire puds with green veg.

Tuesday- Baked potato day -fill with cheese/baked beans/flaked smoked mackerel and serve with crunchy winter salad

Wednesday -sausage day - with mash plus veg (or with hm oven chips or in a casserole)

Thursady - something cold- ham/smoked mackerel/cold meat, baked spuds and veg or salad, pickles

Friday -fish day -fish pie and peas/baked fish/fishcakes/grilled fish + veg

Saturday - mince day - meat and potato pie/cottage pie and veg/salad

Sunday - Roast

susank

I was also a small girl in those days but we always had a pudding, queen of puddings, eves pudding, crumble, jelly, rice pudding, fruit and custard (tinned fruit), steamed pudding, baked apples, jam rolypoly, treacle tart etc etc. Mostly the stodge which is why I am prob the shape I am to-day and have a really sweet tooth:rotfl:

Agapanthus

I can remember that the roast on Sunday always used to come back as shepherds or cottage pie on Monday - and sometimes curry on Tuesday. I can't remember the rest of the week being so fixed, though.

mary43

I first got married in 1962 and more or less followed on from my Mum
Sunday -Roast Beef
Monday -leftover beef minced for Shepherds Pie or diced for beef pudding
Tuesday -Beef stew (veg included) and dumplings
Wednesday - remains of beef stew made into a pie
Thursday - Onion roll made from suet pastry with veg (getting hard up by now)
Friday - Fish and chips from the chip shop (hubby had been paid !!!)
Saturday -Egg and chips

It did vary some weeks depending on the price of meat plus my somewhat feeble attempts to do things with liver, rolled and stuffed beef -did't much like that -bit too fatty.

I did make my own biscuits and even made my own bread (no breadmaker) when there was a bread strike.

Snacks/sandwiches were potted beef, jam (grandma made loads) and dripping..............lovely stuff.
Dont seem to remember us having many puddings unless gran gave us fruit for pies and crumbles.

beemuzed

Hmm! My weekly menus still tend to feature some sort of roast on Sundays with heavily disguised leftovers on Mondays and Tuesdays! As a teenager in the sixties I have to say I don't recall a set weekly pattern to meals - although I do recall all the puddings mentioned by susank. We certainly didn't have pudding every day - but it doesn't seem to have done me any good - I'm still far too "rounded"!

THIRZAH

My Father hated being served leftovers so although we had a joint on Sundays we never had the leftovers-I think my mother must have binned them!

We tended to have liver on a Tuesday as that was one of the days that the butcher delivered. My mother worked in the village library on Fridays with an hour between 5 and 6 for "tea" so we usually had a casserole or something like shoulder of lamb those night-she would put it in the oven with baked potatoes and leave us a note to remind us to turn the oven on when we got home from school.

If we had fish it was always on a Thursday-that was market day in Ely and there was a fish stall on the market

nearlyrich

We didn't eat much meat in the 60's my Dad wasn't very well paid and there were 4 of us (2 more born in the 70's) My mum shopped for food almost every day as there wasn't a supermarket and we didn't have a car to carry it or a fridge to put it in. I remember eating HM Plate Meat pies, Cheese and Onion Pies, Meat and Potatoe Pies, shepard's pie, bacon and eggs (yes for tea) sausage and mash, chips and beans, chips and butter beans, chips and peas, beans on toast, stew and dumplings, liver and onions, slow cooked brisket for Sunday lunch, I can remember having steak the odd time.

We didn't eat rice or pasta, no foreign influenced food like chilli or curries, the only spaghetti we saw came in a tin from Heinz and we didn't like it as much as beans.

We always filled up on Jam butties and probably got through 8 pints of milk a day...

Fridays we never ate meat so it would be fish fingers or if we were really flush fishcakes, the chip shop was not somewhere we frequented, we might get a dish of chips again if we were really well off!

Happy days, we never went hungry but we never knew what we were missing.

balmaiden

A child of the sixties myself and yep I knew the day of the week by our "dinner" eaten at mid-day when Dad came in from the fields. Sunday roast, usually beef, and tinned fruit and clotted cream. Monday cold beef and chips or baked potato,bread ,jam and the rest of the clotted cream. Tuesday pasties no sweet on Tuesdays the pasties were big and filling. Wednesday beef stew and rice pudding. Thursday, beef pie and another milk pudding. Friday belly pork and jam tart and custard Saturday cottage pie and fruit cake.

A lot of beef, guess it was cheap. Also milk was "free" to us as Dad worked on a farm. Always plenty of veg as Dad grew everything we needed.

A repetative diet but I found it comforting in a way. The routine sort of made you feel secure.